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Library | Item Barcode | Call Number | Material Type | Item Category 1 | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... | PRZS3000001590 | PR6053.O42486 S24 1990 | Open Access Book | Creative Book | Searching... |
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Reviews 3
Publisher's Weekly Review
The fact that Collins's almost unrelievedly dark second novel (following his praised The Foreign Husband ) carries both weight and conviction is testimony to his powerful if narrow vision of Japan. On the eve of her arranged marriage to a man she can never love, Sachiko relives the events of her life as they have led her inexorably to this bleak juncture. Daughter of a tyrannical father, the fried chicken king of Kyushu, and a cold mother, Sachiko is like some trapped animal twisting in a net. The net has been spun, however, not just by her immediate family but by centuries of tradition. First introduced to the ways of seduction by the young girl she is tutoring, Sachiko is passed from one man to another, two of them distinguished professors and one a man of perverted sexuality, meeting only one ``prince,'' who abandons her. As men use her, so she learns to use them, while still yearning for love. Through the compelling Sachiko, Collins not only savages women's role in Japanese society, but modern Japan itself: obsessed with money, eager to varnish the past, ``a people who live in a world of lies.'' The author teaches at Tokyo University. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
A beautifully wrought, sensitive portrayal of contemporary Japanese womanhood. For Sachiko Miura, the daughter of a wealthy Tokyo businessman, today is every girl's "dream come true," but her worst nightmare: it's her wedding day. During the ironically somber festivities surrounding Sachiko's arranged marriage to Mr. Ueno, a minor bureaucrat for the department of finance, Sachiko mentally replays the life events that have brought her to this day. Collins deftly uses this stream-of-consciousness technique to contrast desire and expectation with stark reality: the hopes and dreams the bright, educated, and well-traveled Sachiko once held for herself set against the grim fate sealed by her culture's customs and traditions. A finely etched tale--astonishing in its realism and heartrending poignancy. ~--Mary Banas
Library Journal Review
Sachiko Miura tells her story in flashbacks on the day of her long, tedious marriage to Mr. Ueno, whom she doesn't really know and doesn't much like. Her life has been a blend of modern and traditional ways: though she is educated, her marriage has been arranged, with her remote, autocratic father in charge. Sachiko is the only child of a loveless marriage, and she felt neither love nor approval from her parents as she grew up. Her liaisons with older men, graphically described and sometimes brutal, did not prepare her for the love she finds with a visiting Irishman. A fascinating insider's view of a woman in modern Japan by a British author who lives there.-- Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
